In Parts 1 and 2 of this series, we explored why traditional strategy feels broken and how the Anchor, built on purpose alignment, creates internal stability when everything outside is shifting. In Part 3, we turn to your Armor: the three adaptive capabilities that let you act with confidence even when the future remains unpredictable.
In Part 1, we walked through the structural forces that are not going away: talent shortages, AI acceleration, and market volatility. In Part 2, we focused on the Anchor — your internal stability system rooted in purpose at the organizational, team, and individual levels.
Purpose keeps you grounded. But purpose alone won’t move you forward.
That’s where your Armor comes in.
Armor is the set of adaptive capabilities that help you adjust quickly, learn continuously, and make decisions closer to the customer. It’s how organizations become antifragile, a term introduced by Nassim Nicholas Taleb to describe systems that grow stronger through change instead of waiting for stability that may never return.
The beautiful part about this is that capabilities don’t require prediction! You can build them now, and they’ll serve you in every environment. Let’s walk through each one.
1. Iterative Strategic Planning
Traditional planning cycles assume the world will stay somewhat predictable long enough for a multi-year plan to hold. But when markets, technology, and customer expectations shift faster than annual planning can absorb, organizations end up executing against outdated assumptions for months at a time.
Iterative strategic planning (like my R.E.A.L. Evolution service) solves this problem by keeping your long-term direction and reviewing it every 90 days.
How it works
Make no mistake, you still need a 3–5 year strategic direction. This provides clarity and focus. But every quarter, you review what you’ve learned, challenge whether your direction still holds, and adjust where needed. Then you set your 3–5 operating priorities for the next 90 days.
This cadence can seem like a lot at first. But most leadership teams find that this rhythm becomes easier after the first cycle. The consistency creates confidence.
The quarterly cadence:
Quarter Start:
• Review last quarter’s progress
• Identify learnings
• Challenge your strategic direction against current conditions
• Determine where new information (internal or external) may be valuable
• Confirm or adjust your long-term direction
• Set your priorities for the next 90 days
Monthly Check-ins:
• Quick progress reviews
• Early signals
• Resource reallocations
Quarter End:
• Assess results
• Review capabilities
• Document strategic insights
• Prepare for the next cycle
A simple example: A mid-sized distributor aiming to expand into adjacent market segments might discover, four months into the year, that supplier consolidation has shifted competitive dynamics. With quarterly reviews, they can adjust which segments to prioritize while staying aligned to their overall strategy. Opportunities become clearer faster, and decisions improve.
This approach doesn’t rely on prediction. It relies on the discipline to regularly validate your direction and keep moving.
2. Skills-Based Organization + Continuous Learning
This will be one of the most challenging capabilities to build because it’s new, and we don’t have many mainstream examples to learn from. But it’s also one of the most important.
Job-based structures were built for a more stable world, one where work changed slowly and people stayed in fixed roles. Today, when work evolves faster than job descriptions can keep up, rigidity becomes a liability.
A skills-based organization shifts the focus from “jobs” to “capabilities.” Instead of limiting people to narrow boxes, you create a more fluid structure where work is matched to skills, interests, and business needs. This provides not only the strength to weather change, but the flexibility to capitalize on opportunities that more rigid competitors cannot.
And this only works when it’s paired with continuous learning. As AI reshapes tasks and roles, the skills your organization needs will evolve faster than traditional career paths can absorb.
How to get started
Phase 1: Identify your critical capabilities
• What skills will your strategy require in the next 2–3 years?
• Where are you strong?
• Where are the gaps?
Phase 2: Map skills across the team
• Make an inventory of skills (not job titles)
• Identify hidden capabilities
• Spot clusters where you have depth or areas where you’re thin
Phase 3: Build learning pathways
• Connect development to real projects
• Give people chances to build capabilities as work evolves
• Pair every strategic priority with a learning goal
Over time, this flexibility becomes a competitive advantage. You can redeploy capability faster, respond to opportunities sooner, and support development without burning people out.
You might even be surprised by how much talent you already have once you start looking at skills instead of roles.
3. Agile Operating Routines
Internal bottlenecks often create more struggle for organizations than external conditions. The pattern is frustratingly common: frontline teams spot problems early but lack the authority to act on them, while leaders want swift action but don't have visibility into what's actually happening on the ground. The result is decisions pile up at the top, creating delays that compound the original problem.
Agile operating routines break this cycle by creating short-cycle rhythms that push decision-making authority closer to where the insights live and the work actually happens.
Start with weekly rhythms:
• Monday: 30-minute team planning
• Wednesday: 15-minute check-in
• Friday: 20-minute review of what worked, what didn’t, and what was learned
Add monthly rhythms:
• Beginning-of-month alignment
• Mid-month adjustments
• End-of-month results review
Most teams feel relief once these rhythms are in place. The cadence builds consistency and removes the guesswork around priorities.
A quick example: A specialty distributor using this system might discover that weekly rhythms help them spot market shifts two weeks earlier than before. When a competitor raises prices, they can adjust within days instead of waiting for the next leadership meeting.
Push decisions closer to the field
Critical to agile operations is pushing decisions closer to the field. It’s important to define:
• What teams can decide without approval
• What decisions need leadership input but not permission
• What requires full leadership approval
This speeds up the work and frees the leadership team to focus where their perspective matters most: strategic direction, major resource allocation, critical hires, and high-impact priorities.
Idea to Action
Here’s how to start building your Armor in the next 30–90 days:
In the next 30 days:
- Schedule your first 90-day strategic review. Confirm your long-term direction and set priorities for the next quarter.
- Identify your top five critical capabilities. You don’t need a full skills map yet, just clarity on what matters most.
- Test weekly rhythms with one pilot team. Start small. Build the discipline. Learn what works before scaling.
In the next 90 days:
• Complete your first full 90-day planning cycle.
• Conduct skills mapping for one critical function.
• Expand weekly and monthly rhythms.
• Define decision authorities for one area of the business.
The good news is you don’t need perfect certainty about the future to build these capabilities.
You can start now. And once you do, you’ll have a system that supports you in any environment.
If you’d like the full Anchor + Armor whitepaper or want to explore how I incorporate these concepts into my R.E.A.L. Evolution strategic planning services, I’d love to connect with you!
work well,
